ding
itself. Nature was everywhere awake. Children's voices in play blended
with the songs of early workers proceeding to the fields. Butterflies
flitted and floated like detached petals from the flowers. Distance
converted human figures into larger butterflies, yellow and orange,
pink and blue and red. If it were beautiful in the evening, the scene
was enchanting in the morning, and it was with reluctance that we obeyed
the summons to early breakfast, and followed our barang into the kreta
to begin the journey to Sindanglaya.

It was half-past six o'clock when we were salaamed out of the courtyard
of the Bellevue by the hotel "boys."

The kreta was not a handsome affair. In fact it was one of the most
disreputable vehicles it has ever been our misfortune to travel in, and
when we made acquaintance of the road it had to travel over we must give
the owner credit for an abundant faith in the toughness of the kreta. It
was a cross between the carromata of the Philippines and a covered
dog-cart. There was no aid to mount. By a series of gymnastics we
managed to get into the driver's seat--our own was behind his but also
facing to the front. In attempting to get there, a sudden movement of
the team sent us plunging into the barang, and, in extricating
ourselves, head came in contact with the roof and hat went overboard.

Eventually we went off with a bound along the main street of Buitenzorg,
scattering the fowls obtaining a precarious living in the roadway, and
sending cats and dogs and goats flying for safety into the houses.

We had now time to examine the points of our team. It was composed of
three tiny Battak ponies. Two were brown, and one a piebald in which a
dingy chestnut strove for mastery with a dingier white. No two ponies
were the same in size. One was in the shafts; the other two were in
traces alongside. They tapered in size from right to left--the piebald
on the left. The giant of the group had a nasty temper, and when lashed,
as he was frequently during the drive, vented his anger upon the patient
brute doing the lion's share of the work in the shafts. Upon the whole
they did their work extremely well, for a great deal was asked of them,
and they scarcely deserved the almost continuous flogging to which they
were subjected by our driver.

Having travelled over the road from Buitenzorg to Sindanglaya by the
Poentjak, without reserve, we advise pilgrims to Sindanglaya to
patronise the road from Tjiandjoe